Posts tagged ‘losing my diamond’

It is also possible to find your place of detachment in the middle of that loss.

I’ve had the nightmare at least ten times in the last twenty years of my marriage. Literally, I have had the dream.

I look down at my left hand, and … it is gone. The diamond is missing.

In the dream, I realize that there is practically no way I will ever find something so small, something with no color, something that looks like a piece of glass.

Only it isn’t.

It is the symbol of my husband’s love and our commitment to one another.

But, a few days ago, as I sat in my writing chair, the place where I feel most at peace with God and the world (outside of church and Mass), I looked down at my left hand. And the diamond was gone.

I have turned the house upside down looking for that stone.

It is gone.

I have retraced my steps again and again. To no avail.

And I have accepted the fact that this is one time St. Anthony isn’t going to help me out. I guess I needed a lesson in attachments – even to the very best things.

So, I look at the picture of my husband holding my diamond-less wedding band. And I admit, I miss the diamond. The one my husband gave me early in August 1996.

I’m missing a number of things right now. Good things.

I just resigned a position as Director of Public Relations for Israel Ministry of Tourism where I was blessed to write a massive proposal on how we think as Catholics and why the Holy Land is important to us. I was able to interface with some of the biggest names in the Catholic Church in the United States. I was able to take some of them to the Holy Land and assume the duties of a Catholic liaison to IMOT.

Every day, I dressed up, left my apartment (second home), hopped on the bus, took it to the Loop in Chicago’s big business, skyscraper section and rode the elevator up to my office with a window.

Right now, I’m at home. In my bedroom. Laptop on my lap. Looking down at my left hand – with its missing ring.

Yes, I’m missing a few good things right now. I’m practicing some detachment.

I read a passage yesterday from a man who has a name that is one letter removed from my own last name.

Bossuet.

Not Bossert.

What he wrote was a bit of hope. An explanation of sorts. A promise.

“When God desires a work to be wholly from His hand, he reduces all to impotence and nothingness, and then He acts.”

That does not mean that we get attached to a promise or a hope or a glimpse at what might be.

That’s too much of American heresy. It isn’t true detachment.

But, I can live without my precious diamond. The marriage is the thing.

I can live without my office in Chicago. The love for Catholic pilgrimage to the Holy Land is the thing.

I am due a lesson on detachment. I have been given so much. And none of it is mine. I’d be a fool to boast.

And yet, I suppose I have, in my own I’m-not-boasting-I’m-so-humbled-to-be-so-blessed-and-undeserving way of boasting.

So. I, Denise Bossert, am the band with the broken, empty prongs.

Waiting to be filled.

Or not.

And I can still say.

All will be well. All will be well. And all manner of things will be well.

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New! This Lent!

Stations of the Cross for a Wounded World
by Denise Bossert

Stations of the Cross for a Wounded World

Available for purchase ($2.50)
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The single greatest impact on my conversion was the help and wisdom I gained by watching EWTN programming. It continues to be a source of reliable information and spiritually edifying programming.

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